On the Distal End of a Mammalian Humerus from Tonbridge ( Hemiomus major )

Abstract

M r . R. D'A. A nderson , of the Royal Indian Engineering College, has submitted to me the distal end of the right humerus of a mammal for determination. The bone was found in August 1898 by Mr. Grenville Anderson, on the bank of the River Medway near Tonbridge (at a time when the river was running very low), when it was seen projecting from the reconstructed rock. The locality is not far from Messrs. Curtis & Harvey's gunpowder-mills, at a point between a broken and disused lock-basin and an old bridge near the ballast-pit. On visiting the spot I found fragments of flints among the materials which form the river-banks; but although this might support a reference of the specimen to any geological period of subsequent date, there are conditions of mineral structure and osteological character which incline me to believe that the bone has been derived from the Weald Clay. When the fossil came under my notice, the distal end was broken from the shaft; and the shaft was split, showing the very thin condition of the bone of the shaft, and the hard, sandy, calcareous matter which filled the medullary cavity. Traces of matrix at the distal end show that the specimen has been derived from quartz-sand bound together with limonite, such as might occur in the Hastings Sand, Weald Clay, or Lower Greensand, but the character of this matrix is opposed to the possibility of the specimen being of post-Tertiary age. The fossil, as preserved, is 4 inches long